Tag Archives: Obama

It seems that the new normal approaches. Just as we resign ourselves to the unwelcome company of unhappy neighbors, we resign ourselves to the presence of a nameless, malevolent force that studies and pokes, interrupts and cajoles. There is no telling what is the worst they can do — they could probably even destroy my credibility if I gave them the opportunity. That is, make me the paranoid one, the irresponsible one, the broken one.

Their message is simple: I can only cry wolf so many times.

They have a point, but they are also afraid, that much is abundantly clear.

They are afraid of incorruptible power, a genuine rivalry, how about that? Perhaps I will endure a few more years of misery and humiliation, but even their powers here might be limited, because each time they attack, each time they make a new victim, the weather only turns warmer. Eventually, would the world simply melt?

I will have to battle my own anger as much as anything else. There’s something about those beaming, understanding faces that makes me want to punch them.

Damn you, Mr. President. You’ve ruined our game! There is no longer a big and small, only the old lines as clearly blurred as they have ever been. And then there’s me, an isolated martyr muttering in the breeze.

They say that knowledge is power. If that is true then I am one powerful motherfucker.

Will I be a leper? How aggressive will you be? Will you seek to destroy our financial lifelines? You know that if you do there will be awareness.

Will you merely watch? Will you tell them everything of my life story? I’ve thought through my life story. I don’t think I have all that much to be embarrassed about, except the imagined issues, and, of course, the the undeniable face plant of my social standing.

Don’t you know that the only power I exercised was to balance the country’s mood? It was only a game, for God’s sake.

The best I can do today is ignore you. I am through anthropomorphizing tainted advertisements. Let your minions and your adversary co-giants dance. I remove myself from the dialogue. I hope that those who are in fact protecting me do not take it personally, and likewise towards whatever of my eruptive emotives you might espy. I repeat, I sort of want to punch the beaming crowds as much as I want revenge on the previously leering ones.

I have fallen victim to a clandestine operation. The professionalism of its execution was every bit as telling as its arrogant purpose. Maybe the Edward Snowdens of the world will vindicate me some years from now. I doubt anyone needs to be convinced that the spooks are quite literally watching me everywhere.

How will I discern the real world from the CIA world? The evil interruptions from the social necessities?

How far will you go?

How afraid are you?

Only your actions will tell, I suppose, but it does seem that playtime is over. I will no longer make a spectacle of myself. I will hold myself with every bit of righteous dignity that I can muster, and I will get started on the work that I know I have to do (Wow, it’s really fun writing this. I feel so damn real right now! That’s sort of a gift in itself, African Elephant).

Even if they don’t win this time around, the Tea Party’s defining influence in the 2012 election should concern everyone who does not want the U.S. decline to give rise to a new breed of 21st century, American-style fascism. I cam to this conclusion while watching Democracy Now!’s coverage of the Republican National Convention. Admittedly, Democracy Now! is very little pre-occupied with American journalism’s fetish for “objectivism”. From time to time their coverage comes across as paranoid and strident. In this case, I believe that they are right to be paranoid. Growing up here in the Bay Area, I have been witness to all manner of hand-wringing and chicken littling about the unchecked powers of the presidency, destruction of the environment, the rise of the military state, etc. etc., particularly during the Bush years. But George W. Bush, for all his destructiveness and extra-constitutional over-reaches, did not scare me the way that the Tea Party scares me. He infuriated and frustrated, and he forced me to marvel at the gullibility of those who supported him, who, as I believed, failed to see through his flimsy smokescreens. The worse alternative, of course, being that there were people out there who actually believed GW was right to reach for American global hegemony. Call this my political naivety. It is always better to assume the other side is ill informed, rather than malicious. It is less terrifying that way.

To my eyes, George W. always seemed something of an outlier, someone that we could probably handle when it came down to it. Even with his formidable machine of right wing political gamers, media cheerleaders and Christian zealots, he always seemed so alone up there, so paltry. His posturing, his transparently Freudian hang-ups, his almost comically sinister vice president. After his re-election in 2004, by my reading, it didn’t take long for the nation to experience something of a collective buyers’ remorse. Not that we regretted turning down the tepid John Kerry. More like we were embarrassed to have been taken by so obvious a straw man, wannabe strongman, duped by his manufactured threats, his in-retrospect almost childish war game rhetoric.

September 11th traumatized us, and the politicians in power took advantage. But even at our worst, I think we all knew that 9/11 was exceptional. Chances were, it wouldn’t happen again. There would be no war on American soil. The mere passage of days, suspiciously free of Muslim terrorism, proceeded to prove as much. The Bushites had gone out on a limb, and sure enough, with the Democrats’ 2006 and 2008 triumphs, the limb broke. As it turned out, we Americans weren’t so easily fooled. Our political system still had some life left in it, and we could elect, and at first overwhelmingly support, a man who seemed to represent everything that his predecessors weren’t. As if to show the world we had so blatantly disrespected that we weren’t all bad, after all.

Little did we know that the 21st Century was only just getting started. Indeed, seven years after 9/11 a trauma far more significant, and far more impactful fell swift and hard upon us. Upon all of us. And this time assigning blame wasn’t so easy. No WMDs, no terrorist training camps, no Axis of Evil. Rather, our entire way of life was put to trial. Something had gone wrong, or maybe it had been wrong all along. Maybe it had always been, and always would be a house of cards. The economy in free fall, basic comforts and assumptions once taken for granted now called into question, along with our very collective future. Our debt. Our children. Our homes. It was all going to be different now. Recession. Depression. The Great American Decline.

At first, we liberals liked to believe that the election of Obama had been our country’s answer to these new challenges. But this over-optimistic assumption was quick put to the lie. No, that had been too soon. Obama came about because of George W. Bush, not the economic collapse. But almost as soon as he stepped foot in office, a buyers’ remorse of a wholly different nature swept the country. Those who had once supported George Bush, and now felt over-chastened, felt it all slipping away. Our economy brought to its knees, our military chastened, And a fucking black man in the Oval Office? A black man with a middle name of Hussein? This while immigration continued unabated, and we whites’ majority status now on numbered days?

Well, not if we had anything to say about it.

With Paul Ryan as VP, Mitt Romney becomes a Tea Party candidate

And thus, the Tea Party was born. The fruits of the Great American Decline. Comparable in genesis, if not yet ferocity, to Weimar Germany’s National Socialists — the once Great Power Germans grappling with sudden collapse, vs. the still Great Power Americans faced with gradual decline. George W. was the political machine’s power grab. Now it was the “grassroots’” turn. White men, Christians, the “real” Americans as Sarah Palin so memorably put it. A nostalgic, virulently nativist, often expressly xenophobic, soon sponsored by bottomless pools of cash and corporate, political and private donor/allies. Encouraged and enabled by the same well-oiled machine that had directed George W. Bush, their intension from the very beginning was to seize control of the political system, and enact radical change in response to the sudden fears and altered realities of 21st Century America. It has been a little over two years since they first came onto the scene. Already they have ensconced themselves within a political system that had never intended to defend against such a movement in the first place. Now, with their first national convention, their mission has been codified and advertised for the nation and incorporated whole-heartedly into the political mainstream. Neither the old style “country club” Republicans like John Boehner, nor the neo-conservative Karl Rovians Republicans knew how to deal with them at first. Now, it seems that the Tea Party has been accepted. Jim Crow-reminiscent anti-immigration and voter suppression laws are passing everywhere, and the Citizens United decision has facilitated the total corruption, and near-absolute oligarchy of a system already groaning with such pressures. Ron Paul, whose delegates could have functioned as dissenting voices, were decisively excluded from the Convention. John McCain and Sarah Palin in 2008 are small fries compared to Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio. Even if Mitt Romney proves too weak a candidate to best Obama this time around, in the long run, I fear that the piddling Democrats do not stand a chance.

President Obama’s recent speech at a small town Kansas high school was probably specially intended to stir discussion. With his focus on inequality as “the defining issue of the time,” the speech was largely in line with the President’s recent rhetorical shift towards populism and relative leftism. It seems that Obama is taking a stand. He is done attempting some elusive concept of “centrism.” Done talking about reaching out to Republicans who can’t resist calling him a socialist no matter what he does. Obama has finally accepted that meeting them half way is a lost cause. Congratulations. Better late than never. Is it coincidence that his re-election bid is less than one year away? I think not. If we are to judge by comparing his pre- and post-election levels of support, the man is a far better campaigner than legislator. This speech is probably the latest evidence of such.

President Obama has a knack for saying one thing and doing another. In my opinion, this is why he has so perfected the art of pissing everyone off. While his Administration has been, in terms of policy, one of the most business friendly of the modern era, his consistently anti-“Big Business,” Pelosi-esque rhetoric has convinced sensitive CEO’s everywhere that he is the devil incarnate. His healthcare plan, pitched as a strike against the corporate monopolization of medicine, will probably end up most benefiting the pharmaceutical and insurance companies he so derided. If Obama actually follows his Osawatomie speech with a shift in policy, un-prodded, I will be surprised.

But then again, none of us should expect otherwise. Of course he is a political animal. You can’t spell “politician” without “politics.” And yet, for those of you who agree with the message, or at least sentiment, of the Occupy Movement, Obama’s latest talking points are probably justification for encouragement. The latest evidence that we have in fact “changed the conversation.” Still, I let out a short groan when Democrats released their latest offer to Congressional Republicans concerning the Payroll Tax and extended UI Benefits, proposing to pay for these vital programs with a tax increase on those earning more than $1,000,000 a year. Because it would be fantastic indeed if the Republicans went along with this. If nothing else, the Democrats now feel empowered to play the Republicans at their own game, that is, holding a gun on the rest of us, and daring their counterparts to let them pull the trigger. If the agreement doesn’t pass, as I’m becoming increasingly sure that it won’t, the Republicans may well hold the blame in the long run. But in the short run, millions of people will suffer. A perfect example of a political system that has become absolutely incapable of addressing the needs of its citizens. How did we go so wrong? What hope is there going forward?

Maybe, just maybe, it’s the Occupy Movement. You can now add the President to the list of people who believe that we are having an effect. And while he may not be the most astute observer of the national mentality, he is most certainly an important one. This is a terrible time for everyone, politicians included. No matter what we do, things probably aren’t going to get any better for some years yet. We should take these latest developments for what they are: evidence that Occupiers do indeed have people’s attention. Now that the camps are gone, this is our chance to use it. It’s time to move on, and take direct action against those issues that affect Americans everywhere, even in the red states. Things like the foreclosure crisis, student loan debt, and runaway healthcare costs. Instances of recurring pain at its most absurd. Because the politicians like Obama, who may well sympathize, in that well-protected chamber deep down in their hearts, will perhaps find it increasingly difficult to justify their sanctioning of heavy-handed police crackdowns based on an out-dated faith in law and order. Perhaps, then, right downs of mortgages, taxes on the wealthy, re-regulation of big banks, and investment in infrastructure, will enter into consideration. Perhaps we a new New Deal may seem less fantastic. Obama could yet be the FDR of the 21st Century if we force him to it. But we have to force him to it. So far, the polling booth hasn’t worked. The traditional avenues haven’t worked. Sadly, Occupying may now be our best, and indeed our only alternative.